Still, an after-dinner criticism requires to be played with and flashed in different lights if it is to win the ear of the party. In that act of dexterously manipulating a subtle analogy, playing with it long enough to excite attention, and yet not so long as to bore the intelligent, Holmes had certainly become a master.
Wit of this kind has a close affinity to logic; and Holmes is the man of science playing with a weapon available for more serious purposes. According to himself, he played with it a little too much in his professional capacity. A man who could say that the 'smallest fevers would be thankfully received' had not the excessive gravity which we desire in our medical advisers. In some hands the danger would be rather that the wit would be too heavily weighted with the logic. Holmes succeeded in making his logic sparkle and play over the surface of his sentiment; and achieved the feat happily described in the saying of his friend, Thomas Appleton—famous for many good sayings—that he had 'put the electricity of the climate into words.' The force which may crush a fallacy can also coruscate like mild summer lightning. This logical tendency makes a characteristic difference between Holmes and Charles
